SERIOUS NOTE: After people have wasted our time, patience, and commenting space, Farla has been blocked. As has everyone who commented about Farla. The so-called "reviews" are left up as an example of how NOT to behave if you want to keep your reviewing privileges. Criticism is fine, but fighting in the comments is not ok.

MAIN AUTHOR'S NOTE: When dealing with a world where any conflict can be resolved by making magical animals fight, there is plenty of comedy to go around. Two video game-addicted siblings decided to rise to the challenge, with the plan to only write six stories and some postgame adventures. We updated weekly for six long fanfics, taking breaks only between the end of one story and the beginning of the next. We had fun, and got a recommendation on TV Tropes.

Then the recommendation became a whole page, and we started to miss our old characters when writing the new ones. We decided to write more than the planned six. It's obvious that neither of us has ever had a date.

So, now we get to write the official 'start' of the Pokedex Adventures series. Enjoy. (And we have not played Let's Go Pikachu/Eevee. We don't even own a Switch. Don't ask us to write for those games)

Once upon a time, in a region known as Unova, teenage twins and their childhood friends stopped the Hero of Ideals from completing his father's evil plan.

Years before that, the Pokedex tradition was just entering its third year in Pallet Town. This led to the rise of a trainer called Red.

Red liked to consider himself a normal eleven-year-old boy. He had a mother to take care of him, a father to work to keep them fed, a former friend who treated everything like a competition, a ten-year-old sister who might have been a witch…

So maybe not everything in his life was normal, but it was close enough for him.

The day Red was chosen for his Pokedex journey was planned to just be a regular Saturday. A knock at his door as his mother made sure he didn't sleep until noon, followed by another knock a few minutes later, accompanied by his sister's whining. Then, realizing that he wasn't going to get back to sleep any time soon, he shuffled to the door.

"What do you want, Leaf?"

Leaf immediately turned on the puppy eyes. "I want to know if you have that little plastic Meowth from years ago."

Red looked back at his bed, where the Meowth in question was sitting on his headboard with a Spider-Man action figure and a pile of comic books. "Yes."

"Can I have it?"

"Why?"

Leaf gestured across the hall to her own bedroom. "I want to do a money spell, and I figured the best way to get it done was to enchant an image of a Pokémon relating to money."

That was exactly what he'd expected to hear. The one abnormal thing in Red's life was his sister's magic. Her spells rarely turned out like they were supposed to, but there were moments when it seemed that Leaf could direct outcomes with her thoughts, making things happen just because she decided they would.

Red's mother said that it wasn't magic at all. According to her, the girl noticed details and put them together subconsciously, predicting immediate events instead of causing them. Which, to a ten-year-old and her barely-older brother, was much less impressive than magic.

Which is why, instead of telling their mother that she was trying to steal his toy, Red just asked, "What do you want the money for?"

"It's something both of us can enjoy," she promised, being very careful not to give him a real answer.

Unfortunately, Leaf was not the only perceptive child in the house. "Mom said you can't have a trampoline."

Leaf smiled. "But did she say we couldn't have a trampoline?"

"Yes, actually."

"Did she say you couldn't have a trampoline?"

"She did. She's got all her bases covered. She even said she couldn't have a trampoline."

Leaf backed down. "I'm gonna get that trampoline someday," she said, quietly enough that Red could barely hear her.

Red didn't comment on that. "So you don't need the Meowth?"

Leaf's shoulders slumped. "Guess not."

"Cool." He scooted past her, taking a moment to turn back and gloat. "Do a luck spell for me, ok? Professor Oak said he wanted to see me."

Leaf didn't respond. She was too busy focusing on her crushed dreams.

Red arrived at Professor Oak's lab to see the professor was gone. He wasn't surprised, since he knew field research was a thing, but he was slightly annoyed by the mere sight of the man's grandson.

Blue. The one person that Red hated more than anyone else. The bane of his existence. His best friend.

The relationship was complicated.

"Who invited you?" Blue asked when Red pulled up a seat next to him as they waited for the professor.

"The professor did." He gave Blue a disgusted look. "You don't come visit the lab unless you're scared of something. What's got you running?"

"My sister's babysitting." Blue shuddered, as if that was an answer.

"And she's watching a teething infant and you don't want to be near the screams?"

"Worse than that, dude. Picture it: toddler, female, Kabutops costume she never takes off."

"So…a little girl that's into fossils?" Red wasn't impressed. "Sounds pretty normal to me."

"Not normal," Blue hissed, grabbing Red by the shoulders and shaking him, the horror in his eyes all too clear. "She stalks you down the hallway like a horror movie villain. Daisy gave her a Clefairy doll, she just throws it in the air and chants 'Moon.' She's not even three yet, and she's talking to us like she just crawled her way out of Rugrats." He stopped before he could freak himself out more. "She's gonna be a Ghost-type specialist one of these days, I'm calling it now."

The thought of Blue being creeped out by a toddler was hilarious, but Red had moments where he was even more impatient than his frienemy. He waited only a few more minutes before getting back to his feet. "I'm gonna go find your grandpa. Coming?"

"No." Blue stared ahead at the wall. "The kid isn't allowed in the lab even with Daisy. I'm safe here. You can go ahead and get slaughtered, though, I'm not stopping you."

"I told you not to watch that movie."

Blue grunted in response, acknowledging that Red had been right in the only way he was comfortable with. Red grinned, accepting it for what it was, and left the lab whistling.

Still, he slowed to a stop as he passed the Oak family's house, trying to squint through the window to see if he could see the kid that scared Blue so much. There wasn't any movement in the kitchen, but they could have been playing in another room. Besides, he hadn't been around a two-year-old since Leaf, and wasn't sure how a human's verbal development actually worked. Maybe Rugrats-speak was normal.

Making a mental note to visit Daisy after this, just to see for himself, he started walking again, not paying any attention to his surroundings until he heard a loud voice from somewhere behind him.

"NOT ONE MORE STEP!"

Red jolted back into full control of his body, and realized that he'd been about to step out into the tall grass that wild Pokémon liked to hide in. He turned around to find Professor Oak himself, running as fast as he could to catch up, and panting a little when he finally stopped.

"I'm sorry, Red," Oak started, "but it's a terrible idea to go out into the tall grass without a Pokémon for protection, or at least a Pokeball to catch one. Unless your mother gave you one since I last spoke to you."

"Nope." Red looked back at the grass. It rustled slightly, as if there had been a Pokémon ready to pounce at the first sign of a human. "I just went to look for you, and you weren't in your lab, so I decided to go and see if I could find you somewhere in town." That, and I heard your granddaughter was babysitting a demon child and I wanted to see this for myself.

Fortunately for Red, he kept his mouth shut for that part. Professor Oak didn't seem to be worried.

"Follow me to my lab," he instructed. "I was supposed to be there anyway."

Blue, of course, tried to pretend he had been waiting for the professor the entire time, and denied it when Red brought up his fear. Oak didn't seem to be fooled, but he was willing to tolerate it for the sake of the meeting.

"You almost had the right idea out there, Red," Professor Oak said, and Red looked confused for a moment. "The package I was expecting to arrive yesterday was slightly delayed, so I planned on going to get it." He grumbled something to himself. "But, since I forgot to call and reschedule this meeting, I suppose I'll have to do only half of it." He gestured to a table, where there were three Pokeballs. "I have selected the two of you to be Pokedex carriers. Over there, you will find a Charmander, a Bulbasaur, and a Squirtle. One of them will help you on your quest. One will help the other."

"What about the third?" Red asked.

"I suppose I'll find a way to keep it occupied."

Blue looked at the table as if he would have liked to take all three Pokémon for himself, but he managed to restrain himself. "I think I'll let Red choose first," he decided. Seeing the looks he was given by both Red and the professor, he quickly became defensive. "What? We're friends, right?"

Red made a 'kind of, not really' hand gesture. Professor Oak cleared his throat. Blue glared at both of them.

"You guys are the worst."

Red accepted the statement, and approached the table. He looked carefully at the stickers marking each ball – a leaf, a flame, a water drop – and finally picked up the Grass-type.

"You're choosing Bulbasaur?" The professor sounded surprised.

"Just because I go by Red doesn't mean I need red Pokémon," Red pointed out.

Blue considered that. "He's right," he said, surprisingly easily. "We don't need to have our Pokémon choices dictated by our names. So, in that case…Gramps! Give me the Charmander!"

"That's not fair!" Red complained. "You picked the Charmander just so you could have a type advantage! That's why you let me choose first!"

"I was going to pick Squirtle," Blue pointed out, "but, yeah, you picking Bulbasaur changed my mind. Also, Charmander turns into a dragon. I want that dragon." He picked up the ball marked with the flame and released the Charmander inside. "Want to test out our new Pokémon?"

"They aren't toys, Blue," the professor tried to say, but Red was already reaching for Bulbasaur.

"Go, Ralph!"

Both Blue and Professor Oak stopped in their tracks. "You already named it Ralph?" Blue asked, temporarily forgetting about the battle.

Even the Bulbasaur looked slightly surprised by the sudden fact that he had a nickname now. "That's me, right?"

"How do you know it's even a boy?" Blue continued.

Red gave his new Pokémon a questioning look. "You are a boy, right?" Ralph nodded. "Then I don't see the point in continuing this conversation when we're supposed to be battling. Ralph, Tackle!"

Despite the type advantage, Ralph won the battle. It might have been because Charmander didn't know any Fire attacks yet, but Red wasn't going to complain. He'd jump at any opportunity to take down Blue's ego.

Unfortunately, said ego remained intact. Blue just waved off the loss like it was nothing, and turned to the door.

"Guess I need to get stronger," he said, shoving his hands into his pockets. "I'm gonna go home and face the demon child to get Daisy to heal Charmander for me. Smell you guys later."

And he left. Professor Oak watched him leave, and shook his head.

"That boy," he said to himself, before returning to Red. "So! I assume you want to show your mother and sister your new Pokémon?"

"That sounds like a terrible idea," Red answered immediately.

"Then perhaps you can run an errand for me." Oak's expression didn't change. "As I said, an important parcel got stuck at the Pokemart up in Viridian City. If you don't want to go home, you can go and pick it up for me."

"Why can't you do it?"

"Because shut up." And it was now obvious where Blue got it.

Still, Red knew that Leaf was currently still trying to talk their mother into letting them have a trampoline, and he did not want to be there for the inevitable lecture. "How far away is Viridian City?"

"Not far at all. Only an hour or so by walking, and that only if you take breaks to battle."

An hour didn't sound that bad. "If Blue's training his Charmander, I can train my Bulbasaur," he decided. "How hard can it be?"

And that is how Red's journey to fame began.